A few months ago I went to my first ever Sober Event. Lucy Rocca (founder of www.soberistas.com) organised a Soberistas Workshop in Dublin. I flew in from Malaga by myself, with no husband and no friends joining, and it was quite scary, to be honest. I hadn’t met any of the ladies that would be attending in person yet ánd this would be the first time that I would be openly expressing myself as a non-drinker in the form of a group event. As I have never attended AA meetings and that kind of thing it was all very exciting and new.
The arrival
I arrived on Friday afternoon. A few Soberistas (members of the Soberistas website) and I decided to organise a field trip into town together – destination: the brand new alcohol-free bar “The Virgin Mary” in the city centre of Dublin!
So all of a sudden I found myself standing at a bus stop in front of a hotel in Dublin with a bunch of chicas that I had never met before. Most of us were staying in this hotel as this is where the event took place. A beautiful hotel, very much looking like a castle… An amazing and weird thing then happened: we had never met each other before, yet we dove right into the (quite personal) topic of the day: Alcohol and the problems that can arise with drinking it. I found it a revelation just to be able to chat about this so quickly and openly and relaxed with people that I just met. While chatting away, the bus came, we hopped on and on our way we were…
The Virgin Mary turned out to be a beautiful, stylish bar with a good atmosphere. It was quite busy, but our little group just managed to grab the last table. Everyone ordered themselves a nice drink and the lady who was preparing them was taking the cocktail-making process véry serious. She was very focused and the results showed it… Amazing looking concoctions came out!! We all tried some different non-alcoholic cocktails from the menu and my favourite was definitely the “Ceder´s Spritz”. It was made of: Ceder’s Classic, Scavi AF bubbles, cucumber & Poacher´s Classic Tonic. A nice, fresh drink and so much more fun than an ordinary alcohol-free G&T.
The event
The next day was the big day of the event. It was a full program that started in the morning with a welcome talk from Lucy Rocca (Lucy is the founder of www.soberistas.com). After that, Nuala Hyland talked to us about Alcohol Treatment in Dublin. This talk was a bit dry and very locally focused so not very interesting for me, living in Spain. Then it was time for Paddy Brosnan. Paddy is a mindfulness & meditation teacher, inspirational speaker and author. And an incredibly funny guy! There was a lot of laughter as well as serious moments and he gave us some very useful tips for being more here and more aware…
We then had lunch and straight after that, it was time for the Personal Stories. First up came Lucy and then a few other Soberistas followed. OMG how brave were they… amazing… They all had a (very) different life story but alcohol was the thread through all of their lives. The tears where flowing and many hands were clapping, it was a very intense part of the day that gave me a lot of perspective on the miracle called sobriety.
Around 6pm the day came to an end and some of us went out for dinner together. I gave it a miss and had a long walk by myself on the beautiful beach of Dublin (tip from a local I ran into, I didn’t even realize Dublin hád a beach haha). Emptied my head, had a wonderful last night sleep in the hotel and flew home the next morning.
The verdict
I can highly recommend going to sober events – it sure helped me a lot (opening up myself to others, hearing other peoples stories first hand, get tips from experts in different fields) & I am still in close touch with a few of the ladies I met that day, which is awesome!!
Having done the tattoo and now having attended my first sober event I feel really dedicated to my new sober life!! There have been tears (of physical pain – think tattoo – as well as emotionally – listening to some parts of the personal stories) and lots of laughter (the buzz it creates hanging out and talking with people in the same situation is amazing; it is also not only seriousness, there is só much humour and laughter too as we can all relate so well) and I am so happy to be on this journey…!
Izzy x
